I have a question about using could and could have in rhetorical
questions.
I was watching a video where a very old man
who was talking to a priest about his childhood asked the priest, “How
could I tell my father what music meant to me?” as a rhetorical question.
In this context, it is clear that it was completely impossible for him to
have told his father what music meant to him.
Therefore “telling his father what music meant to him” did NOT happen, so
he was talking to the priest about an event that had not happened.
As far as I know, “could have” is used for an event in the past that did
not turn out to happen. For example, when I say I could run in the past,
this means I possessed the ability to run, so this is about something that
in reality DID happen.
However, when I say I could have run, this means despite my ability to
run, I did not run. So this is about something that did NOT happen in
reality, but which I am saying it could hypothetically have happened.
Accordingly, when I say I could not run, this is about something that did
NOT happen in reality. And when I say I could not have run, this is
about something that did NOT happen in reality and means even
hypothetically it was impossible.
So when I ask “How I could run?”, I understand it is a question about how I
had the ability to run. But when I ask “How I could have run?”, I
understand it is a hypothetical question about how I would have had an
ability to run that I did not in reality possess.
The difference I see between two is that when I ask “How I could run?”, my
running in the past DID happen. But when I ask “How I could have run?”,
my running did NOT happen but it could have happened if only some
circumstances had been met.
So my question is why the old man asked “How could I tell him what music
meant to me?” instead of asking “How could I have told him what music meant
to me?”, since telling his father did NOT happen, and, as far as I can
understand, he was talking about a purely hypothetical situation.
What am I missing?
Best Answer
This understanding is not correct:
(By the way, you meant to write "How could I […]", not *"How I could […]".)
"How could I run?" is a perfectly valid rhetorical question, meaning roughly "I couldn't run." It is, among other things, the past tense of "How can I run?", which (if used rhetorically) means roughly "I can't run."
It's perfectly fine to use the conditional mood in rhetorical questions like this — we can change "How can I run?" to "How could I run?" and "How could I run?" to "How could I have run?" with little change in meaning — but it's also perfectly fine to not use the conditional mood.